Overview: Collaboration is commonplace in the digital humanities. It is how people in the field conduct research, and many digital scholarly communications are co-authored. But once technologies become central to the collaboration process, how does collaboration actually work? Under what technological and social conditions is collaboration democratic and most inclined to produce a persuasive project? And what, after all, is a workflow? Why do we need one (or do we?) when participating in collaborative projects?

Suggested Viewing: A lecture, “Collaboration and Dissent,” by Julia Flanders

Assignment Due: Blog Entry #2 – Please answer the following questions and be prepared to share them during our lab session, when you’ll work toward a formal collaborators’ bill of rights for your cluster: (1) In your cluster, how might you document a trail that articulates the character, extent, and dates of everyone’s contributions? (2) For the issue your cluster is researching, what might be some ways to fairly determine and account for who is doing what, when, and how? (3) What are some of your reservations and enthusiasms about collaboration in this course?

Outcomes: Draft a collaborators’ bill of rights for each cluster. Per project, determine at least three sources for evidence (e.g., journal articles, spaces on campus, and online collections). Articulate a preliminary, agreed-upon workflow for each cluster, too.

Overview: In practice, how does collaboration differ from group work? In this class, what should a shared ownership of knowledge production look like? How do we avoid divisions of labor that exploit the labor of some students over others? How do we recognize and confront exclusionary practices (especially when they are institutionalized)?

Assignment Due: Comment on Blog Entry #2 (question circulated during class on Tuesday, September 27th). Also be prepared to discuss and refer to Nowviskie’s and Lothian’s observations about collaboration and attribution.

Outcomes: Determine how credit will be expressed in each of your clusters. Explain why (if at all) credit matters for undergraduate research in the digital humanities.